Not in Love

ELI

Just as Eli had expected, he didn’t hear from sober Rue—not the following day, nor the following week. It was one thing to be drunk and horny, another to follow through in the harsh daylight. Rue clearly ran her life like a tight ship, and Eli couldn’t imagine there being room for him in it—not past the chemical help alcohol could provide.

By a stroke of luck, time didn’t allow him to be too mournful. One of Harkness’s agri-tech startups was in dire need of a sudden influx of cash, and someone was required on-site to figure out the best strategy. Hark was in California, so Eli volunteered, thinking that some distance from Austin would be ideal. Then a two-day trip to Iowa turned into five days of meetings and inspections, and on the return flight he fell stone-cold asleep in his seat, his head a jumbled exhaustion of aerial imaging, crop health, and asymmetrical lips. The amused look the flight attendant gave him told him he’d drooled all over himself.

Once he was back, Minami got sick, and Sul took time off to take care of her, which meant that most day-to-day shit fell to Eli and Hark, but he didn’t mind too much. Because Eli liked his job.

The realization had sunk into him not too long ago, a gradual acknowledgment more than a thundering moment of self-awareness. His conscientious choice of an expendable major aside, finance had never been part of his dreams. And yet, he was good at it. Nearly ten years ago they’d started Harkness with a singular, specific destination, but the journey had surprised him more than once, and he couldn’t help wondering what would happen once they reached their port of call. Whether they’d come far enough.

Had he come far enough?

A week after his trip, he stumbled home past midnight, exhausted by the back-to-back meetings, and found a note scribbled in Maya’s handwriting on the kitchen counter.

I know you’re busy making several shitloads of monies, but will Tiny and I ever see you again?© 2024 Nôv/el/Dram/a.Org.

To the side there was a chicken potpie covered in cellophane wrap. He smiled, recalling the whys and the hows of his past choices.

Maybe it wasn’t far enough, but it was certainly far.

Minami and Sul returned to work looking rested and more joined at the hip than usual, so much so that Eli wondered if they’d faked being sick and gone on a sex cruise. There was a newlywed energy between them that was about three years late, and if Eli had picked up on it, it was being drilled into Hark’s skull with the force of a swarm of termites.

That night Hark said, “Need to blow off some steam,” and Eli drove them to the gym without any comments. But the racquetball court they’d reserved was already occupied by two women. “Fucking brilliant,” Hark muttered under his breath.

“Did you two book the room?” one asked.

Eli smiled. “No worries. We’ll ask for another.”

“There are none. Someone else was using the one we booked, so we came in here.”

Eli glanced at Hark, whose mood was rapidly deteriorating. “That’s fine. We’ll just wait till you’re done.”

“Or, want to join us for doubles?” the other player asked with a grin.

Eli looked at Hark again, who shrugged an indifferent why not. They split up one man and one woman per team, and if Eli thought that it was because he and Hark would otherwise have an advantage, that notion was instantly, humblingly dispelled.

“You two play a lot?” he asked his teammate half an hour later, during a much-needed water break. He used the hem of his shirt to wipe his sweat. It was already drenched.

“Almost every day when we were in college. Increasingly less so for the past five years,” she told him. “I’m Piper, by the way.”

“Eli.” He shook her hand. She was older than he’d originally thought, then. Tall, with long dark hair. Blue eyes. Beautiful, objectively so, but in a way that was completely different from Rue, who had the uncanny ability to soak up all the light in a room, like a prism that refused to spit out rainbows. Piper was bright and luminous and smiled a lot. Because she doesn’t despise you, a sardonic voice in his head suggested.

It was right.

They chatted for a while, and Eli thought that Piper was skirting the thin line between friendly and flirty, a familiar dance. He listened to her stories about being a pharmacist, wondering if he was interested. He should be. How refreshing, the idea of spending time with a beautiful, intelligent, funny woman who didn’t loathe the idea of being attracted to him.

It would be good for him—a hard reset. Rue had messed up his parameters, but someone else might bring him back to factory default. Someone with whom a simple conversation wouldn’t be a land mine. Someone who wouldn’t look at him like he’d turned into a balloon animal when he asked for a date, who saw him as more than a quick fuck. At the very least, racquetball was on the table.

Did Rue play any sports? Basketball or volleyball, maybe, given her height. She’d be good at it, he was sure. She seemed coordinated, and her body was strong. He’d felt the muscles tense under the pliant flesh of her thighs, and just that little moment had been more of a turn-on than some of the seriously dirty stuff he’d been up to in the past decade.

“You guys ready?” Hark asked from his side of the court, and Eli had his answer. He was not interested in Piper. Not if while she told him about her last Pacific Northwest road trip, all he could do was think wistfully about having his head between another woman’s legs.

“That was unexpected,” Hark told him in the parking lot after more racquetball, after Eli pleaded a previous commitment when invited out for dinner, after a shower spent contemplating the severe idiocy of being hung up on Rue Siebert.

“Yeah. Really good players.”

“I meant, the part where you debuted your monastic endeavors.”

“Just tired is all.” Historically, Eli had been the one who got around. Girlfriends, friends, people he barely knew. Dates, relationships, hookups. Hark…even before Minami, his sex life had been more circumspect. They hadn’t discussed it much after, because there was little to talk about.

“Right. Nothing to do with Dr. Rue Siebert, then?”

Sometimes Hark was insufferable. “Nothing at all,” Eli lied. “Did you like…?”

“Emily.”

“Did you like Emily?”

“She’s pretty fantastic. Gave me her number,” Hark said quietly.

A beat. “Are you going to use it?”

He didn’t reply, but they both knew the answer.

The last transcript of a three-part witness deposition was dropped on Eli’s desk that Friday night. “In case you’re in search of some light bedtime reading,” Minami told him.

When he looked up, her smile was mischievous.

“Is it…?”

She nodded. “The lawyers are still combing through it. They refuse to commit on whether the depo gives us reason enough to send a notice of default and acceleration, but they have no doubt that something weird is going on. At the very least, we’ll be able to go to court and ask for more discovery.”

“Thank fuck.”

“I know. Let’s get dinner. To celebrate,” Minami offered. “Just the two of us, no Sul or Hark. I’m tired of my stupid husband and your stupid husband getting in the way of our affair.”

Eli checked his watch and got to his feet. “Can’t. Meeting Dave.”

“Right, I forgot. We’re still on for tomorrow, though? All four of us.”

“Sure.” He gathered his stuff, and couldn’t help chuckling when she began chanting, “He was a skater boy, he said, ‘See you later, boy.’ ”

“C’mon.”

“His friends weren’t good enough for him.”

“It’s for a noble cause.”

“Now he’s a hockey star, driving off in his car.”

“You’re the worst,” he told her lovingly as he slipped out of the room.

The face of Dave Lenchantin was smile-wrinkled and sun-weathered—somewhat surprising, for a man who’d lived two-thirds of his life inside an ice rink. He immediately spotted Eli, and quickly wrapped up a conversation to weave through the crowd and greet him.

The yearly fundraiser was an informal occasion, not unlike the carnival Eli’s middle school had organized when the district refused to allocate funds for graphing calculators. There were bake sales, crafts stations, portrait artists, temporary tattoos, ring tossing, and even a dunk tank—in which, Eli was amused to see, sat a terrified Alec, Dave’s partner. The event was a great moneymaker for the charity initiatives sponsored by the rink. “Dr. Killgore,” Dave said, reaching up to hug Eli. They’d first met when Eli was in his early teens, but the man had never been less than half a foot shorter than him.

“I never did get that doctorate, Coach.” Being reminded of that part of his life never got easier. “I’ll take mister, though.”

“I ain’t calling you mister, Killgore. Not after that time you bent down to pick up a cracker, threw out your back, and sat out three games.”

“Lies.”

“Hell no.”

“It was an Oreo.”

“Well, I hope it was worth your dignity.” Dave smiled, genuinely happy. “Thank you for the generous donation, Killgore.”

Eli shook his head. “Thank you for…” Training me for years, even when I was a dumbass teenager who thought he was hot shit and knew better than anyone around him. For believing in me. For calling over talent scouts. For providing me the structure I needed and didn’t even know it. For being there when Maya and I were alone. For my entire fucking life, really. “Making me do bare-knuckle push-ups on the ice that time I showed up wasted to practice, even though it was Rivera’s fault for spiking the Gatorade.”

“It was my pleasure, son.”

“I just bet.” Eli wasn’t sure why he’d responded so well to Dave’s brand of discipline, especially when the relationship with his own parents had always been so strained. He’d been a rebellious, defiant child. One of Eli’s teachers suggested that a physically demanding extracurricular activity might soak up the hostility coursing through him, and he’d been forcibly enrolled in every team sport the greater Austin area had to offer. Only hockey—and Dave—had stuck.

“How’s Maya doing?” Dave asked. “I think I saw her around a couple weeks ago?”

“Visiting Alec, probably. She’s staying with a friend, or she’d be here with me.” When Eli had become the sole caretaker of his eleven-year-old sister, his financial situation had been disastrous. He’d had several minimum-wage jobs on top of debt and a mortgage, which meant long hours and no money left for childcare. Leaving a clearly bereaved, obviously confused, extremely angry child home alone had been out of the question, but Dave had offered Maya a spot on Alec’s figure skating training team—which, to Eli’s surprise, she’d accepted. Access to a rink, let alone a trainer, would have been cost prohibitive, but Dave had covered most expenses—thanks to fundraisers like this one. Maya had never been more than an amateur skater. Nonetheless, the sport had grounded her.

“You two should come over for dinner soon.”

“Just name the night.” Eli smiled. “But let’s order out.”

“You damn princess. It was one time. And how is ketchup on mac and cheese not a good idea? I was just tellin’ Rue that Alec and I have been taking these couples cooking classes—”

“I’m sorry,” Eli interrupted. The hairs at the back of his neck lifted. “Telling who?”

“You don’t remember her? Ah, I bet you were gone when she started training with Alec. But she might know Maya. There she is! Rue!” Dave waved at someone, a wide gesture, impossible to ignore. Blue eyes flashed in Eli’s head.

A small key chain, shaped like a skating shoe.

Minami’s voice: Apparently she was a student athlete.

“Rue, could you come here for a moment?”

She was wearing a Lenchantin Rink T-shirt. Handing a slice of pizza to a child in an ice-skating dress. Focused, a little remote. Out of place in the loud, bustling crowd.

As usual, Eli was irreparably lost at the sight of her.

She didn’t hear Dave calling, but the older woman next to her tapped her twice on the shoulder and pointed in Dave’s direction. Rue’s eyes lifted, met Eli’s, and he thought, Fuck. Me.

He’d managed not to think of her obsessively for the past week—except when he hadn’t. Which was an embarrassing amount of time. Most of the time. All the fucking time.

He didn’t need this. He didn’t need to be reminded of how physical she was, of the way she soaked up the air in his lungs. He didn’t need to witness her full lips parting in surprise, or the moment she went very, very still.

And he certainly didn’t need Dave hollering, “Rue, c’mere. There’s someone I wanna introduce you to.”